for November 17 Stand Up to Racism National Unity demonstration against fascism and racism, London

By Chris Norris

A very British sort of coup,That's how the thing began.No soldiers on the street, a fewMore cops, no master-plan(Or so it seemed), same TV crewPlus smiling anchor-man,The tabloids quiet, with no to-doAs life went down the pan.

Not like those foreign coups, you know,The sort you read about,Where things get rough from the word go,And where what started outIn barracks, beer-hall, or a showOf rabble-raising cloutBy some misfit went on to sowThe seeds of civil rout.

Of course we had our mini-Trumps,Our BoJos and Rees-Moggs,Our own much nastier Forrest Gumps,And home-grown demagoguesWho wait till unemployment jumpsThen set their running dogs,The press, to see that Britain dumpsOn folk in foreign togs.

But no-one had the nerve to say'We're heading up shit creek',Or 'Armageddon's on the way',Because from week to week,And latterly from day to day,As race-hate reached a peak,We just tuned out and chose to stayAt home while skies grew bleak.

We stayed at home when conscience toldUs plainly 'Time to fight',Till human lives were bought and sold,Masked gunmen stalked the night,And all the signs said: either holdThe line against these right-Wing thugs or wake and find they've polledTops in the plebiscite.

Our local monsters seemed so tame,Compared with those we sawOn foreign stages, that we came To say 'That's the last straw!'Each time they made some lying claimOr spurned the rule of law,Yet never squarely fixed the blame,So served as their cat's-paw.

That's why so many didn't heedThe wake-up call, or skippedThe anti-fascist demo: we'dAll seen the way they whippedUp hatred, spread their vicious creed,And stuck to Hitler's script,Yet deemed them fools and saw no needTo get their feathers clipped.

But now, too late, we clearly seeHow dumb we were to thinkThose goons a lesser threat since weFine folk – Left-Liberal Inc – Just mocked their crass buffooneryAnd too long failed to linkThe mounting violence with the pleaOf those on terror's brink.

If only! – twenty/twenty hind-Sight's such a splendid thing – If only we'd the strength of mindTo fight, and not just clingTo comfort-nostrums of the kindThat left all us left-wingStay-homers in the same old bindOf helpless witnessing.

If we'd been up in London whenThe anti-fascists madeThat last defiant protest, thenWho knows? we might have played,Like Daniels in the lions' den,The role of lead brigadeIn swilling out the born-againHate-spawn the Fuehrer laid.

This poem and the accompanying image is taken from Chris Norris's forthcoming book The Trouble With Monsters, published by Culture Matters.

Will not even the massacre of children in Yemen end the silence over the murderous complicity of the British government? They were little kids on a bus on the way back from a picnic, no doubt laughing and raucous as large groups of children tend to be, and then they were burned to death. At least 29 children were among the 43 slaughtered, an atrocity perpetrated by the aircraft of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.

Consider Britain’s role. According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade, our government has supplied the grotesque Saudi dictatorship with £4.7bn worth of arms since the war in Yemen began. Just months ago it feted the Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman: unveiling a joint £100m aid deal, granting this tyranny humanitarian PR, while BAE Systems announced the sale of another 48 Typhoon jets. It gets worse: British military personnel are directly involved in helping the Saudi war effort – to what extent remains intentionally murky.

- Owen Jones, The Guardian, August 10th 2018

The U.K. government’s attempts to protect weapon sales to the Saudis are unsurprising given the numerous ties that BAE Systems, which holds a ‘near-monopoly position’ in the U.K. defence industry, has to the U.K. political establishment. Chief among these ties is BAE’s link to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, whose husband and close political adviser, Philip May, works for the Capital Group, BAE’s largest shareholder and thus the largest beneficiary of the company’s arms sales abroad.

- Whitney Webb, MintPress News, May 2nd 2018

He's back, your Dad, back home from work, so goAnd hug him, then make sure to sayHow nice it is to seeHim home, and hope things went OK,And how you love him, just to let him know.

Remember: please don't ask again what heDoes daily, how he earns his pay,Or what he has to showFor all those long hours he's awayWhile we wait home for him, us three.

For then he'll think you're trying to replayThat ugly scene not long agoWhen he was on TVAnd those protesters sank so lowAs to yell 'How many kids d’ya kill today?’.

They'd Googled him, found he was CEOOf British Aerospace, which theyInstantly took to beTheir all-time big chance to waylayThe monster and upend the status quo.

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.

- Karl Marx

You've got the dosh, you bankers, but we've gotThe hands-on savvy, things we've learnedThe tough way, both by catching up with whatMarx had to say, and by hard-earnedExperience; stuff you do, you banker lot,But seem routinely unconcernedTo figure out because the master-plotYou bank on might be overturnedIf word got round and we were primed to spotThe hedge-fund hikes, the bridges burned.

You politicians, you with lots of cloutWho fix things, line your pockets, lieTo save your skins, boss everyone aboutExcept the boss-class; by-and-byWe're going to kick you scheming bastards outBecause we’ve figured how and whyYou came to pull that con-trick off withoutSufficient brain-power to applyFor any sort of job save lobby-toutOr weapons salesman on the sly.

Then there's all the arms-business CEOsIn league with you who'll tradeWith any blood-crazed tyrant (lots of thoseAround just now) or any renegadeRegime so long as it's a deal that goesTo further swell the pile you’ve madeFrom conflicts stoked and armed by devil knowsWhat back-hand bribes, and with the aidOf ministers not anxious to discloseHow life-style so outstrips pay-grade.

We'll hunt you down and then we'll make you pay,All you sharp-suited types who killOr maim kids by the dozen every dayWhen missiles miss, as missiles will,Yet put your own kids off the scent when they,As children do, attempt to fillThe day-job details in: you'll hardly say'Well, kids, I have this special skillAt mechanized mass-murder, so hooray,There's always lots more blood to spill!’

And what’s to say of you, you Eton-bredAnd Oxbridge-educated thickRich heirs of rank or privilege who headFor a safe seat, then take your pickOf cabinet posts, and then go off to bedWith racist nut-jobs keen to kickThe migrants out, deport all Muslims, shredThe social contract, and – to tickYour last box – have the tabloids seeing redShould broadsheets ridicule your schtick.

You academics, don’t imagine you’ll’Scape whipping or get off the hook,No matter if you did some out-of-schoolCampaigning stuff, or sometimes tookTime off ‘research’ to join a march, retoolYour own self-image, cock a snookAt campus activists or, height of cool,Now dedicate your latest book ‘To all those comrades, past and present, who’llFind faults they’ll kindly overlook’.

And lastly you, the mischief-making clanOf old New Labour types who've hadA spell in office, sold out, and now planYour comeback with some tips to add,Like ‘send the unions packing when you can’,‘Keep business sweet’, ‘be quick to glad-Hand CBI chaps’, and ‘make sure to panThose Trots or Corbynistas madEnough to still keep faith with what beganWhen have-nots twigged why times were bad’.

So you're the bunch lined up to get the bootFirst off when crunch-time comes, when it'sA case no longer of which lies best suitYour purpose, or which scam best fitsYour game-plan, but of finding out a routeFrom what’s long kept us in the pitsOf hope betrayed where slogans substituteFor action to what finally permitsThe struggles of the past to bear late fruitBefore the fascist backlash hits.

Of course we offer no firm guaranteesYou’ll make the grade: you may just lackThe brains, or stamina, or want to pleaseYour latest boss, or soon head backTo old thought-habits, or mislay the keysMarx gave you, or just fail to crackThe codes that let our class-oppressors seizeTheir chance to cultivate the knackOf catching us in weaknesses like theseThat throw us constantly off track.

Yet, not to be excluded, there’s the smallBut crucial room for choice by graceOf which you chronic loiterers might haulYourself out of the limbo-spaceWhere you’ve so long consented to play ballWith fools and rogues. So learn to faceThis simple truth: that when the empires fall,From Rome to Wall Street, there’s no placeFor those who hang on till the curtain-call,With options open just in case.

The above image is by Stefan Siegert. It's called Laughing Marx and is on the cover of I’ll have the Last Laugh Yet!, available online or from bookshops for £8.99 plus p&p.

Bertolt Brecht Offers Advice to Waverers about Attending the Great Anti-Trump Demonstration (London, July 13th, 2018)

by Chris Norris

You say: ‘it’s not my business, my concern,Nothing to do with me. My voteWent to the good guys, those who’d turnThe horror-show around’ – I quoteYour own words back at you – ‘and spurnThis monster Trump’. But that, please note,Is just the opposite of what we learnFrom the last time they pushed their boatWay out, those fascists, while we chose to burnThe one frail craft that stayed afloatTill its name ‘socialism’ sank asternAnd Hitler had us by the throat,Us Germans. So don’t kid yourselves: you’ll earnNo thanks if your Trump antidoteIs that old ‘30s nostrum, ‘just adjournThings till they find some new scapegoat’.

You tell me he, the monster, has his friendsAnd allies in your country, quickTo jump aboard the Zeitgeist as it tendsOnce more to swing far-right and tickAll boxes on their list. How soon it ends,That swing, depends on how you pickYour moment, see which course it recommendsBy way of strategy, and stickTogether till some twist of fortune sendsThe monster close enough to kickIts teeth in. If such vulgar talk offendsYour bourgeois-liberal ears, then flickBack eight decades: thinking of Hitler lendsThe mental jolt it takes to clickAnd really grasp what Devil’s dividendsAccrue when good folk miss a trick.

My point: you have that chance, don’t let it go.The monster’s fellow-monsters thoughtIt high time to invite him over, soMake sure it doesn’t go for naught,That lesson from the past. It serves to showWhat happens when those folk who oughtBy rights to rise en masse and strike a blowFor liberty sit back and thwartAll plans to give some tyrant the heave-hoThrough mere inaction. Blame their shortAttention-span, their wishing to lie lowWhere risk’s involved, or just the sortOf knack we have for feigning not to knowWhen there’s some Trump-type juggernautAhead. One thing’s for sure: the status quoWon’t long maintain your life-support.

So now you’ve got this bunch of quisling Brits,These fools and rogues in government,Who’ve sold out to the monster, as befitsTheir monstrous natures, sentOur old friends packing, torn up any bitsOf customs-law that can’t be bent,Dragged parliament and country through the pitsOf Trump-style racist hate-talk, spentTwo years in vain attempts to call it quitsWith wiser allies who’d preventThis looming shipwreck, done the moral splitsWith every thug or dodgy gentFrom sundry vile regimes, and – hypocritesUnmatched - made sure that, if things wentOff-track, they’d have their own skin-saving kitsAnd thus no real cause to repent.

The Brexit scam, Trump’s visit – just in caseYou’ve not caught on, they’re intertwinedAt every checkpoint in the global raceFor some ‘new order’ of the kindThat our flag-waving Brexiteers embrace,Along with all the millions blindTo what’s afoot. Once more, they dare to baseTheir claim on ethnic grounds combinedWith junk-Romantic crap like ‘spirit’s placeOf earthly dwelling’, redefinedIn racist terms. That’s what you’ve got to face,You waverers, and get behindThis bid to occupy the fight-back spaceOur craven parliament’s consignedTo Trump’s fifth-columnists. Let their disgrace,Not yours, be always kept in mind!

Our representations of human social life are designed for river-dwellers, fruit farmers, builders of vehicles and up-turners of society, whom we invite into our theatres and beg not to forget their cheerful occupations while we hand the world over to their minds and hearts for them to change as they think fit.- Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, ed. Willetts

Great theoretical obstacles prevent us from recognising that the concreteness with which life is depicted in Aristotelian drama (drama which aims to produce catharsis) is limited by its function (to conjure up certain emotions) and by the technique this requires (suggestion), and that the viewer thus has a stance imposed on him (that of empathy) which prevents him readily adopting a critical attitude to the things depicted.- Brecht, Journals, ed. Rorrison and Willetts

Before you talk of 'tragedy', just think:It goes right back to Ancient Greece,To Oedipus and allThose boneheads whoBrought upsets sure to callDown retribution without ceaseEven to the umpteenth generation, linkBy bloody link, till civil peaceRequired that empires fall,That heroes stewIn their own juice or haulThemselves offstage for a short leaseOf fate-tormented life. So, in a blink,You've got the gist: it's sheer caprice,The way things go in smallWith folk like youAnd me or states in thrallTo divine wrath. So why increaseThe sum of woes by kicking up a stinkWith social change your Golden Fleece,Or your device to stallWord getting throughThat though you won't play ballJust yet the cost of your set-pieceDisplay's to boost the stock of Creon Inc?

My point: that tragic stuff's a clear non-starterIf what you really want’s to bringReal change about and smashThe bourgeois state,Not just to tap a cacheOf maudlin sentiments. They ringTrue only if you're keen to give your heart aQuick tug at every feeling-stringThat answers to the trashPut out as baitFor fools with each rehashOf some old plot. The tragic thingIs just their age-old need to play the martyr,Enjoy vicarious suffering,And relish how the clashOf love and hateIn rival clans can dashA glorious career and flingIt on the pile of heroes whose life-dataInvolve just that which has them swingFrom high to low, then crashAs gods or fatePrescribe. They cut a dash,Those tragic figures, but they springFrom dullard stock: good comedy's much smarter!

It's that ‘catharsis’ notion we should blame,That Aristotle-backed ideaOf tragedy as whatRequires a well-Designed dramatic plotTo generate 'pity and fear'In a well-tempered audience. They'll tameAt one remove the wild careerOf passions that are not,As primers tell,Allowed to grab a spotStage-centre lest such violence steerThe soul on stormy sea-tracks apt to claimMore victims. Better they appearAs just 'our human lot'In forms that swellWith pathos yet have gotNothing of use to say when we'reOn strike, or unemployed, or blind and lame,But don't need Oedipus or LearTo tell us just how hotThe inner hellOf lives long gone to potFor reasons squarely in the sphereOf politics, beyond that tragic frame.

It makes you think, rage, argue, answer back!That's why a comic twist best goesWith taking Marx to heartAbout the needTo change things, not let artOr art-talk lead us by the noseSo we make up in chatter what we lackIn will-to-change. All that high showsOf tragedy impartIs a fool's creedThat puts the feeling-cartBefore the action-horse and throwsThe glove in sooner than defy the packOf moralising frauds or thoseWhose sermons always startAnd end up keyedTo narratives that chartThe self-same tale. Its downbeat closeIs meant to show how tragic odds just stackUp steadily like hammer-blowsThat no-one can outsmartSince they exceedThe power of life or artTo hold at bay. It's fate bestowsAll weal or woe: ours just to take the flak!

A stupid doctrine, surely you'll agree,And one that just might tell us whyA so-called tragic playLike 'Hamlet' hadIts audience making hayAnd prone to split their sides, not cry,When viewed by Soviet workers brought up freeOf bourgeois notions. So this guy,This Hamlet, with his wayOf acting madThrough having lots to sayAbout himself they'd classifyAs clown, as joker, one the bourgeoisieMight count the pinnacle of high(Since tragic) art, while they,An audience gladTo find such stuff passé,Could give the comic side a try.They’d set their more inventive wits to seeWhat novel tactics might applyIn order to conveyHow such a sadThough risible displayCould yet be made a means wherebyThe tragic’s stripped of bourgeois dignity.

That's why I say leave tragedy alone,Or anyway make sure you treatIt with the cheerful kindOf insolenceThat comes of wit combinedWith tactics picked up on the street.Such ploys are best, most intimately knownTo those whose long tale of defeatIn the class-wars may find,At times, a senseOf clouds still dark yet linedWith silver. That’s why they can greetThe tragic ethos of high hopes long flownWith comic strategies to cheatThe fate of lives consignedTo impotenceBy the same turn of mindThat led those dumb-clucks to repeatThe Attic horror-show. So they'd atoneFor deeds enacted in the heatOf passions mute and blindWhose recompenseRequired the double-bindOf guilt pre-rigged to have us beatUntil the tragic mode’s one we’ve outgrown!

'She kept saying: “You have to go. You have to go”', recalled one aunt, Ahlam, 30. ‘She was the most dedicated of all of us.’ Wesal, 14, was shot dead on Monday, one of more than 60 people killed as Israeli snipers fired on protesters. The teenager has left behind a family who are grieving, but who also feel purpose in their loss.‘Now she is dead, I’m ready,’ said another aunt, Anwar. ‘After what she did, we are not afraid.’- The Guardian, May 19th 2018

I don't know what to do, dear heart,I don't know what to say.It's just that when those settlers startBad-mouthing us I stayAnd bad-mouth back, or else take partIn stone-fights, like the dayLast year when bits of martial-artBravado let me playThe hero and appear street-smart.

But that was months ago, my dear,When things were bad but notAs bad as now. Months on, I fear,The toll of all those shotAnd killed or maimed will mean that we're,As per their master-plot,A remnant doomed to disappearFrom this old trouble-spotWith just the rubble left to clear.

They use live bullets on us now,Live rounds designed to killAs many as their 'rules' allow,Those rules that let them spillOur blood as fast as they can ploughIt back beneath the hillOf our wrecked homes. And yet, somehow,It reaffirms our willThat no one break the Nakba vow.

My dear, such things I've seen that it'sAs much as I can doTo grasp how readily this fitsWith all that we've been throughThese seven decades; how it commitsUs fighters to pursueThe path that most directly pitsA cause both just and trueAgainst the next live-bullet blitz.

But argument's no use when they'reDead-set on just the sameBrute tactics as were brought to bearAgainst them in the nameOf a Volk who refused to shareThe land with those who cameOf ‘alien stock’ so must go where,As here in Gaza, shameAnd suffering are their daily share.

The Warsaw Ghetto: that's the placeThat always comes to mindWhen each new grab for living-spaceLeaves other folk confinedTo the fast-tightening embraceOf borders watchtower-linedAnd justified on grounds of race,Or creed, or claims enshrinedIn some scriptural database.

And so they drive us, ever moreGrief-toughened, out to meetThe wire, the guns, the daily scoreOf deaths, the forced retreat,And this new bloodbath of a warThat sets us Gaza street -Trained skirmishers to face, offshoreAnd inland, those eliteShock troops with weaponry galore.

So what else should we do againstThese Axis powers – US And Israel – that have us ring-fencedOn every side, and pressSo hard on us that we're incensedEnough to turn distressInto the rage of victims tensedIn pogrom-readinessFor harms that can't be recompensed.

One thing I know: we'll not be doneWith fascism in allIts protean forms till we've begun,Backs hard against the wall,To lift our gaze from the short runAnd look to the long haulWhen every lying tale they've spunBecomes a conscience-callFor David's stone against Goliath's gun.

On 18 October 2017, Wilson was detained at the Wolverhampton Home Office reporting centre where she had been reporting on a fortnightly basis since August 2015. She was put in a vehicle that reminded her of a ‘meat van’, because it had no windows, and taken to Yarl’s Wood for six days; she says this was the worst experience of her life.

She called her daughter from the detention centre and cried uncontrollably down the line. ‘I said: “Get me out of here, Natalie, please get me out of here”.’ After six days she was put in another van, and when she got out she realised she was being taken to a building next to Heathrow airport; she was told that she would be put on a plane the next day.

It was only at the last minute that she was released, given a travel warrant for train tickets and let out to make her way back to Wolverhampton. ‘The planes were taking off over my head; I had to put my hands to my ears because of the noise’, she said. - The Guardian, May 5th, 2018

The good ship Windrush brought us here,Seven decades back and more.They greeted us with many a cheer,With ‘Welcome’ flags galore.

]]>ben@leftspace.co.uk (Chris Norris)PoetryWed, 09 May 2018 21:22:55 +0000'Structures don't take to the streets!' May '68: a structuralist ripostehttp://culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/2802-may-68-a-structuralist-riposte
http://culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/2802-may-68-a-structuralist-riposte

May ’68: a structuralist riposte

by Chris Norris

A cloud no bigger than a man’s hand crosses the English Channel from Paris, and then, in an instant, the trees, the orchard, the hedgerows, the field of wheat, are black with locusts. When at length they rise to fly on to the next parish, the boughs are bared of all culture, the fields have been stripped of every green blade of human aspiration; and in those skeletal forms and that blackened landscape, theoretical practice announces its ‘discovery’: the mode of production. - E.P. Thompson

‘Structures don’t take to the streets!’ - graffito on wall of the Sorbonne, May 1968

OK, point taken: it's not 'on the street'You'd find them, all those 'structures' that we wentOn endlessly about till soixante-huitWhen we skulked in our academic tent(Or so the story goes). We'd failed to meetOur one great chance and challenge heaven-sentTo end the left's two-centuries-long defeatBy making good the two decades we'd spentOn theory-talk.

Small wonder should they greetUs lot, those militants, with slogans lentAn added force by dint of our eliteNormalien credentials, native bentFor high-flown chat, and tendency to treatThe world as theory's oyster. We'd frequentOnly those streets (they said) where a discreetEscape-route helped us twisters circumventOur own past calls to action. Then some neatDebating-trick did service to augmentOur cultural capital, and take the heatOff any failings that we might repentWere they not wiped clean from our record-sheetBy the fine structuralist expedientOf counting subjectivity a cheatThat's foisted on us when we representOurselves as 'free'.

Thus all our thoughts repeatThe lie that has us willingly assentTo ideology's absurd conceitWhereby the hoodwinked subject rests contentWith a fake ‘freedom’ that would have him beatIts own unyielding bounds. How orientOurselves to action if the driver's seatOf willed intent contains a subject pentBy structures that perpetually secreteThe solvent of each self-constituent.

That's the idea: that all those Althusser-Primed theorists could do, faced with the MayÉvénements, was to disown all shareOf agency, urge strikers to delayThat premature revolt, and so declareThe present conjoncture not one that theyCould possibly endorse. Then they'd compareThe current prospects with the grisly wayThings go whenever passions start to flareAnd, as so many times before, betrayThe white-hot zealots to the black despairThat comes of hopes and dreams long kept at bayBy the same powers that soon must conquer theirIll-timed charade.

Yet I'd still say,All these years on, that you'd best spareUs street-averse soixante-huitards your pay-Back accusations of our taking careTo hide ourselves behind a great arrayOf abstract propositions framed to bearWhatever weight of evidence might frayOur threadbare theory-hope. It's you who errMost grievously if you take that cliché,'No structures on the streets', as if to squareAccounts with real-world history and playThe role of less-deceived. Who more awareThan us how world-events will often strayFar wide of anything that the armchairPhilosopher might dream hors de mêléeSince structures don't emerge out of thin airBut just when subjects meet the come-what-may.

Quick recap for the faint of heart or weakOf memory: 'structure' signified the siteOf struggle, contestation, and critiqueWhere subjects found a leverage-point despiteAppearances. It seemed to show a bleakSince language-based determinism quiteDevoid of all idea that we might speak,Act, criticise, and thus relieve our plightAs drifters up the croc-infested creekOf any ideology that mightRecruit compliant minds.

That's how the cliqueOf New-Right, mostly ex-left types indictUs true soixante-huitards, we who still seekA way to get the basic issue right,The one that comes to us from Ancient GreekPhilosophy and yet remains the blightOf system-builders as of those who'd sneakFree-will back into some (it seems) airtightConstruction through a small but handy leakOf subjectivity. No inner lightFor us old structuralists, no high mystique,Like Sartre's, of a freedom shining brightWith existential promise through that freakOf nature, human choice. Hail the White KnightWho comes (though often by the most obliqueOr complex ways around) to wing our flightFrom the iron grip of causal laws that wreakDestruction on our human will to slightMere circumstance and end the losing streakWe suffered as if fate had fixed the fight.

My point: that structuralism helped us seeBeyond that Sartrean fix by letting go,Once and for all, the thought of subjects 'free'In the sense 'really, deep down, prone to noImpediments of kind or of degreeTo their free choice: 'defend the status quoOr strive against it!' That's the reason weTook language as our model, or – you knowThe story well enough – the master-keyOf structural linguistics. This we oweTo Saussure, Jakobson and company,Plus Althusser who managed to bestowOn Marx a reading that could claim to beBoth rigorous and well equipped to showOur own conjuncture with the claritySuch thinking brings. The syntagmatic flowOf speech is like the combinatoryOf actions and events, an ordered rowThat bears the mark of willing agency,Whether to hold in place or overthrowSuch order. Yet it shows unconsciously – So structuralists maintain – the sous-niveau Of differences and contrasts that decreeHow speech or actions signify althoughThe speaker, like the agent, won't agreeThat what they've said or done makes sense on soArcane a set of terms. Think: why should she,The militant, however street-wise, growConversant with depth-codes of strategy,Or speaker venture nothing till, below

The surface utterance, he too can traceThe signifying systems that eludeOur conscious grasp? For else they’d slow the paceOf speech, or thought, or action, and precludeAll access to the generative spaceWhere subjects somehow find the aptitudeFor words and acts that promise to displaceThe ideologies that once subduedAll stirrings of revolt. So we gave chaseTo errant signifiers, or pursuedThose fleeting signs – exposed to us by graceOf Marx and Freud, plus insights late accruedFrom Althusser and Lacan – that the caseIs not at all as it's naively viewedBy those who take our words and deeds at faceAcceptance but, more tellingly construed,Half-yields to ideology's embraceYet kicks against it.

Hence the multitudeOf symptoms that would promptly self-eraseAt its behest if not for us, the broodOf old-school structuralists who opt to baseOur strategies and methods on a clued-Up symptom-reader's grasp. This shuns the raceFrom thought to deed, reminds us what ensuedIn ‘68, and bids we play our aceCard to warn just how easily a moodOf premature euphoria takes the placeThat, we say, falls more aptly to a shrewdSince theory-guided project to retraceThe structural constraints that had us screwed.

Portugal’s president has described the circumstances in which a homeless Portuguese man died near the UK parliament as ‘inhumane’. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa paid tribute to the unnamed man found dead in an underpass near Westminster tube station, a stone’s throw from an entrance to the Houses of Parliament. In a statement on the official website of the president of the Portuguese republic, de Sousa said he ‘laments the death in inhumane circumstances of our fellow countryman of 35 years, who was found without life in one of the metro entries in the British capital’.

- The Guardian, 16th February, 2018

The Jesus note: not one that IPlay up but there's that lineOf his that goes'Look on me, all ye who pass by:Was ever grief like mine?'Bit lachrymose,You'll say, and on the whole I tryTo give no outward signOf inner woes,Though times there are when I could dieAnd none would grieve or pineExcepting thoseWho paused awhile to wonder whyThe tourist crowds confineTheir passing showsOf interest to Big Ben on highOr to the sty of swineOur nation knowsAs Parliament. Great place for myCampaign to take the shineOff its fake poseAs friend of every little guy,That time-dishonoured shrineTo freedom's foes.

There's lots of MPs walk my way,The Tories nose-in-airOr keen to showThey'd have me thrown in gaol todayIf it was left to theirBest judgment (knowThem by their rotten fruits, I say),And 'socialists' who'll spareSmall change then goOn endlessly about how they,The old guard, did their shareTo overthrowClass-prejudice or some clichéStamped 'vintage Tony Blair',And then – althoughAn off-note in that cabaret – Real socialists who'll dareTo halt the flowOf tourist-trade and disobeyThe bylaws with a rareAnd powerful showOf outrage fitted to convey'Blame that lot over there,Just a stone's throw'.

The Mail and Sun delight to callThem 'Corbynistas', theseNew types who seemA breed that’s worlds apart from allThe self-styled 'left' MPsWhose only dreamIs getting on, or playing ball,Or trying hard to pleaseWhatever teamOf crass time-servers have the gallTo pull their usual wheezeAnd switch mid-streamTo business-class. It's a long haulFor anyone who seesHow the regimeOf capital has us in thrall,Yet those who hold the keysLack any schemeTo buck the future or forestallA turning tide that freesThe distant gleamOf hopes renewed at every fallOf fortunes built on sleaze – The Levellers' theme!

Myself, I'll just hang on here tillThe next election (mustCome soon enough!)And then let's hope the people's willRevolts in sheer disgustAt folk who stuffTheir pockets, gourmandise their fill,And think it fair and justThat we sleep rough,Us whom the cold nights sometimes kill,Yet who retain their trust,When times are tough,That in the long death-dealing chillOf Tory rule we've sussedAn age-old bluffAnd figured how the plebs might stillFind the right ass to bust,Vow not to fluffIt yet again, but bend our skillAgainst those upper-crustClass-laws we’ll sloughOff like each parliamentary billNow set to bite the dustAt our rebuff.

That’s why the Corbynistas linkMy situation here,Begging for breadAnd living always on the brinkOf the deep freeze I fearLies just ahead,To Tory policies that syncA code-word like 'austere'With plans to shedAll care for those our masters thinkBeyond the civic sphere,Hence good as deadAlready. This new lot won't shrinkFrom setting out to clearThe Augean shedDespite the daily growing stinkOf many a privateerCaught short insteadOf mixing it with Graft Corp Inc,Advancing their career,And helping spreadThe moral rot at which we winkTill, of a sudden, we'reUnhoused, unfed.